Hi Land Shark: Re: "So what?"
Sorry, I should have realized that you shouldn't be asked to read science articles that give evidence against the concept that we're all going to die because of CO2. I'll explain.
Further we conclude that under the present experimental conditions (P = 1 atmosphere, T = 21.2°C, [SO 2 ] = 2ppb) there is a clear evidence of ion - induced nucleation as a source of aerosol production, which corroborates earlier measurements using only gamma radiation as the ionizing source [Svensmark et al., 2007; Enghoff et al., 2008]."
"Nucleation" is how clouds form.
The study found that cosmic rays create nucleation and therefore help form clouds.
Clouds have a huge effect on the climate.
The late 20th century saw the smallest flux of cosmic rays for the last 8000 years.
But changes in the cosmic ray flux (that's a fancy word that means "flow" in Latin) are not included in the usual global warming models.
So global warming models assumed that the warming was caused by CO2 rather than the decrease in clouds.
So global warming models (incorrectly) concluded that increases in CO2 would cause much larger increases in temperature than one calculates by simple physics (which gives about 1 degree C for each doubling of CO2).
As this is corrected, the estimates of future warming due to man's emission of CO2 will have to be deeply revised downwards.
-- Carl
P.S. As if that's not enough, the sun appears to be dropping into another "grand minimum" which greatly reduces the sun's magnetic field. This reduces the earth's shielding from cosmic rays. So over the next ~50 years we'll see more cosmic rays and thus more clouds. And colder temperatures.
How much colder? Could be the start of the next ice age. Could be a Maunder minimum size reduction. Could be a Dalton minimum. Hard to say. But whichever it is, it swamps the effect of CO2. Here's the little ice age:
en.wikipedia.org which corresponds to the Maunder minimum:
en.wikipedia.org
If you think that humans are the only cause of change to climate you might read this short review article:
REVIEWS OF GEOPHYSICS, VOL. 48, RG4001, 53 PP., 2010
doi:10.1029/2009RG000282
SOLAR INFLUENCES ON CLIMATE
L. J. Gray, J. Beer, M. Geller, J. D. Haigh, M. Lockwood, K. Matthes, U. Cubasch, D. Fleitmann, G. Harrison, L. Hood, J. Luterbacher, G. A. Meehl, D. Shindell, B. van Geel, W. White
National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Meteorology Department, University of Reading, Reading UK
Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, Dubendorf, Switzerland
Institute for Terrestrial and Planetary Atmosphere, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York, USA
Physics Department, Imperial College London, London, UK
Meteorology Department, University of Reading, Reading, UK
Institut für Meteorologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
Department of Geography, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA
Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, Research Group Paleoecology and Landscape Ecology, Faculty of Science, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA
"Understanding the influence of solar variability on the Earth's climate requires knowledge of solar variability, solar-terrestrial interactions, and the mechanisms determining the response of the Earth's climate system. We provide a summary of our current understanding in each of these three areas. Observations and mechanisms for the Sun's variability are described, including solar irradiance variations on both decadal and centennial time scales and their relation to galactic cosmic rays. Corresponding observations of variations of the Earth's climate on associated time scales are described, including variations in ozone, temperatures, winds, clouds, precipitation, and regional modes of variability such as the monsoons and the North Atlantic Oscillation. A discussion of the available solar and climate proxies is provided. Mechanisms proposed to explain these climate observations are described, including the effects of variations in solar irradiance and of charged particles. Finally, the contributions of solar variations to recent observations of global climate change are discussed."
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